Briefing

Commercial Property Newsletter: Spotlight on Development September 2016

Welcome to the September edition of our newsletter on all matters affecting the property development industry.

It is almost three months since the historic referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union. Since then, to paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the demise of the U.K.'s property market seem to be greatly exaggerated. In the industry generally, market activity has continued, if not unabated, at least healthily. The fall in the value of the pound immediately following the referendum result provided sufficient motivation for foreign purchasers to buy more properties in London and the South East. Significant housing and quasi-public sector projects are forging ahead. U.K. institutional investors continue to purchase property in the same way.

However, the property development sector overall has in the same period (and to borrow from another American author of the nineteenth century) carried out a passable imitation of Rip Van Winkle. How long will this continue we wonder? Until Article 50 is triggered, when the future of the City is more clearly understood or some other point in the future? Rip Van Winkle slept for more than twenty years. We all hope the current hiatus does not last that long.

On a more prosaic note, we have articles in this edition on easements, works by a landlord causing disturbance to his tenant, nuisance in the context of noise and a case which is ostensibly about liability for defective products, but has a corporate knowledge message for employers.